We recently entered ExploreMetro in the Urban Commuter Challenge. This is a competition which challenges app developers to improve life for commuters in Shanghai.

Now, if you’re reading this blog you already know that we make Shanghai’s best metro map, so how could we make it even better?

By adding offline exit maps! Read the story of what we did, and please consider voting for us on the ChallengePost website.

Back in 2010 I analyzed the passenger numbers on the Shanghai Metro’s twelve lines. Earlier this year the Shanghai Metro company released new data, which allows us to compare the growth in passenger numbers across the different metro lines.

With a 38% increase between 2010 and 2013, Line 2 has overtaken Line 1 to be the busiest line in Shanghai, with 1.65 million daily passenger rides. The biggest increase was Line 10, which rose by more than 5 times, from 120,000 to 680,000 – although it’s worth noting that Line 10 had heavily restricted trial opening hours in 2010. Line 9 and 11 have also seen a near-doubling of traffic.

The only line to see a drop-off between 2010 and 2013 is Line 13, but the segment that was open in 2010 for the World is separate from the segment in Western Shanghai open today.

The Shanghai Metro is one of the longest metro stations in the world. How stations does it have, as of December 2014? That’s a slightly tricky question to answer, for a number of reasons:

Which lines to include?

For the purposes of this article, we’re including the fourteen lines which provide regular metro service: that’s Lines 1 through Line 13 and Line 16.

We don’t include the Jinshan Railway (“Line 22”), as the frequency of trains on the line is not high enough to constitute a rapid transit service, and there is no integrated ticketing with the rest of the network. Similarly, we exclude the Shanghai Maglev train.

Which stations to include?

We include all currently open stations.
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